DESCRIPTION
Thousands of Africans lived in Romantic-era Britain, including Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, and Mary Prince, who between them initiated the tradition of Black British writing. Each had experienced slavery as a child; each achieved their freedom, and each wrote the story of their lives: Sancho’s Letters were the bestseller of 1782, proving to fashionable London society that Africans were equally capable as Europeans. Equiano’s 1789 Interesting Narrative was part of the movement to abolish the slave trade, while Prince was the first African woman to tell her life story in England in her 1831 History of Mary Prince.
